HALF=MOON  SERIES 


EDITED  BY 

MAUD  WILDER  GOODWIN 
ALICE  CARRINGTON  ROYCE 
RUTH  PUTNAM  AND 
EVA  PALMER  BROWNELL 


Vol.  II.,  No.  a.  February,  1898. 


ttamman\>  Dall 

Galcott  Williams,  %:ib.2>* 


Copyright,  1808,  by 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
New  York  London 

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Ube  ftntcfcerbocfcer  Qtces,  t*ew  Borft 


TAMMANY  HALL 


31 


OY^  1 1  W        &OK  SI 


Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


33 


Half  Moon  Series 

Published  in  the  Interest  of  the  New  York 
City  History  Club. 


Volume  II.    Number  II. 


TAMMANY  HALL. 
By  TALCOTT  WILLIAMS,  LL.D.,  L.H.D. 

TAMMANY,  for  nearly  a  century,  has  con- 
stituted the  political  agency  by  which 
the  major  mass  of  the  voters  of  New  York  City 
has  made  effective  its  preferences  in  regard  to 
the  rule  of  the  city  for  good  or  for  ill  to  the  worst 
harvest  yet  reaped  in  the  wide  field  of  universal 
suffrage.  This  ruling  organization  of  adult  male 
voters  has  sometimes  been  for  years  together 
only  a  plurality  of  the  voters  of  the  city  profiting 
by  the  divisions  of  its  opponents,  and  it  has 
sometimes  itself  divided  by  fission,  a  part  pre- 
ferring to  use  one  of  the  many  agencies  organ- 
ized in  imitation  of  Tammany  ;  but  for  seventy 
years  there  has  never  been  a  time  at  any  elec- 
tion when  it  was  not  perfectly  clear  to  every 
unprejudiced  observer  that  a  clear  plurality  of 
the  voters  resident  on  Manhattan  Island,  pre- 
ferred, other  things  being  equal,  to  re-elect 
rulers  whose  primary  selection  had  been  de- 
termined by  this  political  agency. 


Doters  on 
flDanbattan 
HsIanD 


34 

Uammans  Iball 

Ube 
^fortunes 

of 
Europe 

It  has  been  associated  with  the  most  gigan- 
tic spoliation  of  a  civilized  city  known  under 
manhood  suffrage,  though  the  aggregate  of  its 
levies  has  been  small  by  the  side  of  the  gigan- 
tic fine  inflicted  on  Paris  and  France  by  the 
military  despotism,  which  ruled  both  with  the 
applause  and  approval  of  liberal  England  and 
despotic  Europe,  from  the  coup  d'etat  to 
Sedan.  Until  the  close  of  the  last  century,  it 
was  expected  in  Europe,  as  it  is  still  expected 
in  all  Oriental  countries,  that  those  who  gov- 
erned a  nation  or  conducted  the  higher  and 
more  important  duties  of  its  religion  would 
enrich  themselves  in  the  process.  The  princely 
palaces  of  Rome  record  the  splendid,  sump- 
tuous and  successful  application  of  this  princi- 
ple to  the  fruits  of  the  faith  of  Christendom. 
So  the  " great  families"  of  Europe,  their 
homes,  their  fortunes,  and  their  rent-rolls, 
save  when  the  reward  of  military  sack  or  ser- 
vice, nearly  always  represent  the  lucrative  use 
for  private  emolument  of  the  control  of  pub- 
lic revenue  on  a  larger  or  smaller  scale,  through 
the  exercise  or  inheritance  of  feudal  agencies 
of  rule,  or  a  share  in  the  more  modern  agen- 
cies of  administration.  The  faith  and  the 
patriotism  of  men,  their  fears  for  the  next 
world  and  their  civil  necessities  in  this,  have 
in  all  ages  up  to  our  own  been  regarded  as  the 
legitimate  sources  of  private  fortune,  by  those 
who  allayed  the  one  or  supplied  the  other. 

it 


TEammang  Dall 

35 

It  is  only  under  democratic  conditions  that 
men  are  expected  to  gain  power  without  los- 
ing their  poverty,  and  even  the  rapid  acquire- 
ment of  wealth  by  legitimate  means  during 
public  service,  is  deemed  a  cause  for  scandal 
and  suspicion.  To  the  usual  rule  of  popular 
institutions  that  public  servants  should  leave 
the  public  service  without  money  and  without 
debts,  their  stipends  permitting  not  even  the 
honorable  acquirement  of  a  competence  after 
years  in  positions  of  power  and  responsibility, 
Tammany  Hall  has  been  not  the  only  excep- 
tion, but  the  one  most  conspicuous,  significant, 
and  scandalous.  Yet  the  prodigious  and  co- 
lossal thefts  of  certain  of  its  leaders  have  never 
permanently  destroyed  the  confidence  of  a 
plurality  of  the  voters  of  New  York  City  in 
its  value  as  a  political  agency,  which,  by  and 
large,  gave  them  the  kind  of  city  government 
which  they  preferred.  They  have  returned  to 
its  banners,  its  ballots,  and  its  candidates 
whenever  an  exposure  too  scandalous  to  be 
endured  drove  them  from  it,  and  they  never 
more  unhesitatingly  adhered  to  their  faith  in 
it  under  untoward  circumstances  than  in  the 
election,  which  in  November,  1897,  surren- 
dered to  Tammany  the  entire  government  of 
Greater  New  York,  in  whose  history  and 
management  that  of  Tammany  will,  in  future, 
be  merged. 

Tammany,  during  its  periods  of  success,  is 

2>emos 
cratic 

ConM= 
tions 

36 

TTammans  ftall 

tteal 
Causes 

the  strongest  and  most  convincing  argument 
which  exists  to-day  against  the  extension  of 
the  principle  of  manhood  suffrage  to  the  ad- 
ministration of  urban  affairs.    The  principle 
itself  is  only  a  form  of  government,  or  to  speak 
more  accurately,  a  form  of  the  consent,  on 
which  all  rule  rests.    The  most  arbitrary  des- 
potism, in  its  ultimate  analysis,  springs  from 
general  consent,  and  the  "freest"  institutions 
have  no  other  basis.    The  issue  between  the 
two  is,  whether  this  consent  shall  be  exercised 
by  submission,  or  through  the  periodical 
choice  of  rulers  by  all  the  voters  of  a  commu- 
nity.   If  the  admitted  evils  of  Tammany  for  a 
century  are  the  normal  fruits  of  the  direct  rule 
of  a  great  city  by  its  voters,  free  institutions 
are  doomed.    The  ultimate  verdict  of  civiliza- 
tion and  of  honesty  will  be  against  the  form 
of  government  on  which,  for  over  two  centu- 
ries, as  has  been  confidently  believed,  rested  the 
hopes  of  man  and  the  progress  of  the  race. 
If,  however,  these  evils  are  not  physiological 
but  pathological,  if  they  are  not  the  normal  re- 
sults of  conditions  either  natural  or  inevitable, 
but  pathological  instead,  the  normal  results  of 
abnormal  conditions,  then  the  final  fruit  and 
result  of  this  great  object  lesson  on  the  politi- 
cal consciousness  and  convictions  of  mankind 
depends  upon  whether  these  abnormal  con- 
ditions are  reparable  or  irreparable  ;  due  to 
circumstance  or  to  human  nature,  the  out- 

ftammans  Iball 

37 

come  of  a  special  environment,  or  of  the  gen- 
eral working  of  the  democratic  principle. 

So  momentous  are  the  consequences  in- 
volved in  a  solution  of  the  cause  and  work- 
ing of  Tammany  Hall  that  neither  its  assail- 
ants nor  its  supporters,  and  much  less  those 
who  discuss  it  from  the  general  standpoint 
of  past  politics  or  present  history,  have  been 
able  with  an  even  temper  to  contemplate  its 
disastrous  operations,  for  three  generations  a 
constant  encouragement  to  those  who  hon- 
estly believe  that  privilege  and  the  govern- 
ment of  the  few  are  necessary  to  the  happiness 
and  security  of  the  many,  and  a  discourage- 
ment as  perpetual  to  those  whose  confidence 
in  the  righteousness  and  worth  of  the  visible 
recurrent  and  articulate  control  of  the  many,  is 
unshaken  even  by  Tammany  Hall.  Yet  the 
facts  of  the  case,  neither  few  nor  complex,  are 
both  accessible  and  apparent,  enacted  on  a 
scene  more  than  any  other  in  the  world's 
history,  the  object  of  constant  unsparing  and 
contemporary  record. 

The  largest  city  of  the  Western  World  is 
situated  on  an  island  whose  shape,  size,  and 
surroundings  deprived  it  of  an  homogeneous 
civic  population,  while  its  own  growth  was  a 
part,  and  the  most  conspicuous  part,  of  that 
great  stream  of  emigration  which  has  trans- 
ferred 15,000,000  persons,  or  half  the  present 
population  of  the  United  Kingdom,  during  the 

ConMs 
tfons 
on  flDans 
battan 
Asians 

3« 

TTammans  foall 

Confcis 
tions 
oif  /Dane 
battan 
Island 

last  seventy  years,  from  one  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic to  the  other.  Our  daily  and  practical  mo- 
rality is,  in  large  measure,  the  result  of  our 
consciousness  of  the  social  conscience  of  the 
community  of  which  we  are  part.  Every  man 
who  travels  is  aware,  always  by  observation, 
and  but  too  often  by  experience,  of  the  sudden 
shattering  of  moral  observance  which  befalls 
those  of  training,  character,  and  years,  when 
they  suddenly  find  themselves  strangers  in  a 
strange  city,  free  from  the  observation  of  those 
who  do  or  may  know  them.  A  not  dissimilar 
moral  deliquescence  is  the  inevitable  result  of 
immigration.  If  it  has  furnished  more  than  its 
proportionate  and  numerical  share  of  crime, 
corruption,  and  imprisonment,  the  wonder 
must  be  that  it  has  not  done  more. 

While  in  London  but  a  small  percentage  of 
the  population  is  of  foreign  birth,  while  the 
rapid  growth  of  foreign  cities,  whose  swift  in- 
crease during  the  present  century  is  often  cited 
by  the  unfriendly  critics  of  our  municipal  af- 
fairs as  proof  that  our  urban  problems  offer  no 
peculiar  difficulties,  has,  with  negligible  ex- 
ceptions, drawn  its  accretion  from  a  sur- 
rounding population  of  the  same  race,  language, 
and  institutions;  New  York  City  has  been 
a  vast  sand-dune,  without  integral  relations, 
swept  across  the  Atlantic  and  deposited  in  the 
most  convenient  coign  of  vantage  on  the  coast 
of  North  America.   Deprived  of  all  the  myriad 

Vammang  Ifoail 

39 

stay  and  support  to  sound  political  action 
which  comes  from  coherent  and  uninterrupted 
mutual  personal  acquaintance  and  tradition, 
these  unrelated  units  represented,  for  the  most 
part,  that  precise  stratum  of  society  where 
generations  of  relentless  toil  had  ingrained  the 
impression  that  all  social  institutions  worked 
together  for  the  advantage  of  the  few.  It  is, 
inevitably,  those  who  most  bitterly  feel  this 
disadvantage  in  the  Old  World,  who  seek  the 
New.  This  great  mass,  in  its  diverse  language 
and  with  very  varied  traditions,  but  alike  in  a 
past  training  of  profound  distrust  for  both  the 
honesty  and  good  faith  of  those  who  enjoy 
privileges  of  education,  wealth,  and  refinement, 
of  direction  in  business,  of  supremacy  in  affairs, 
or  of  influence  through  ability,  was  certain  to 
find  its  natural  and  necessary  leaders  in  the 
members  of  that  class  of  the  community  which, 
by  supplying  his  first  wants,  comes  into  direct 
personal,  and  more  or  less  selfish  or  unselfish 
contact  with  the  stranger  laboring  with  his 
hands  to  seek  new  fortunes  in  a  new  home. 

The  class  to  which  he  turned  for  direction 
could  not  be  the  employer,  for  he  represented 
the  restraint  and  the  bourgeois  opportunity  from 
which  the  immigrant  fled,  and  which  he  hated 
in  his  old  home  and  new.  It  could  not  be  in 
religion  he  would  find  leaders,  for  through  all 
its  early  stage,  the  great  mass  of  immigrants 
were  of  a  faith  deemed  alien  by  the  organized 

mature 
of  tbc  Hm= 
migrants 

40 

Uammanp  Ibali 

tfteason 
for  ©rgans 
i3atfon 

churches  of  the  community  to  which  he  came. 
The  small  grocer  and  the  liquor-seller,  the 
mechanic  foreman  or  superintendent,  and  the 
contractor  risen  from  the  ranks  of  laborers,  and 
for  whom  he  was  able  to  furnish  the  employ- 
ment the  raw  newcomer  first  seeks,  consti- 
tuted the  directing  force  of  society  brought 
most  directly  in  contact  with  the  immigrant 
and  his  offspring,  new  landed  or  long  resident. 
Coming  as  strangers  and  unorganized,  the 
immigrant  population  fell  under  the  immediate 
direction  of  that  stratum  of  society  which 
lay  nearest,  and  which  had  none  of  the  ob- 
jectionable features  of  other  strata  whose  rule 
was  resented,  and  whose  privileges  elsewhere 
were  remembered  with  bitterness.  The  pre- 
cise classes  which  have  been  described  con- 
stituted, and  still  constitute,  the  backbone  of 
Tammany  Hall. 

It  is  a  grave  error  to  confound  the  natural, 
praiseworthy,  and  often  sound  desire  of  the 
men  of  this  class  of  lesser  retail  dealers,  liquor- 
sellers,  and  contractors,  to  be  of  political  influ- 
ence, and  to  bear  a  share  in  the  business  of 
government,  with  the  organized  and  continu- 
ous plunder  of  some  of  their  higher  leaders. 
To  many  in  the  rank  and  file  of  Tammany 
Hall,  no  pecuniary  advantage,  but  the  reverse, 
has  come  from  their  membership.  They  are 
in  it  because,  being  what  they  are,  and  the 
city  what  it  is,  it  offers  the  readiest  channel  to 

Uammans  iball 

41 

gratify  the  laudable  wish  to  be  of  weight  and 
moment  in  the  community  in  which  one 
lives.  Flagrant  and  flagitious  corruption  of 
voters  has  existed,  but  corruption  only  lubri- 
cated the  machine.  It  was  not  its  prime 
motor.  The  wish  and  will  of  a  well-organized 
plurality  was  this.  Tammany  has  been  the 
agent  of  this  wish.  The  not  infrequent  result 
has  been  a  corruption  unexampled  under  dem- 
ocratic and  liberal  institutions,  though  easily 
matched  among  despotisms  to  whose  types, 
methods,  and  institutions,  Tammany  of  late 
constantly  tends  to  revert. 

These  influences  would  not  have  become 
paramount  and  predominant  on  Manhattan 
Island,  if  it  had  contained  a  city  normally  con- 
stituted as  to  its  population,  or  normally  housed 
as  to  its  dwellings.  For  the  first  half-century, 
New  York  was  such  a  city,  and  Tammany  Hall, 
while  powerful,  was  not  despotic.  But  be- 
tween 1840  and  1870,  a  large  portion  of  the 
middle  class  of  New  York  was  siphoned  off  by 
insular  conditions  of  territory  into  Brooklyn, 
which  has  often  had  its  boss,  always  its  politi- 
cal independence,  and  never  a  Tammany  Hall. 
No  insignificant  share  of  the  same  general 
class  was  diverted  to  the  suburban  settle- 
ments of  New  Jersey  and  Connecticut.  This 
left  New  York  City  without  that  precise 
social  enclave  which  might  have  saved  it,  and 
which  in  all  cities  and  all  times  is  the  salva- 

Ube 
Class 

42 

ttammang  Iball 

Domestic 
Service 

tion  of  the  commonwealth,  the  class  which 
filled  the  trainbands  of  London  in  the  fight 
with  Charles,  and  the  Continental  Army  in 
the  fight  with  George.  The  instant  this  class 
was  restored  by  the  charter  of  Greater  New 
York  to  the  constituents  of  the  city,  Tammany 
Hall  was  seen  to  be  reduced  in  its  relative 
vote,  though  on  Manhattan  Island  it  retained 
its  usual  plurality.1 

This  double  circumstance,  a  population  im- 
migrant in  fact  or  by  descent,  which  found  its 
natural  leaders  in  the  lower  retail  ranks  of 
economic  distribution  and  social  direction, 
and  an  urban  community,  in  which  a  valuable 
and  necessary  constituent  had  been  decanted 
off  of  the  island  by  its  shape  and  by  the  pres- 
sure of  trade  and  population,  was  undoubtedly 
aggravated  by  the  conditions  of  American  soci- 
ety. Fugitive  in  all  its  relations,  American 
life  has  reduced  to  its  final  contractual  nexus 
the  relations  of  domestic  service.  Where  do- 
mestic service  is  personal  and  continuous,  it 
and  the  relations  which  grow  up  under  these 
conditions,  furnish  an  important  agency  by 
which  the  political  opinions  of  the  well-to-do 
are  filtered  through  all  social  strata.  The 
American  habit  of  discharging  servants  in  the 
spring  and  re-engaging  them  in  the  fall,  and  a 
domestic  habit  and  attitude  which,  from  faults 
on  both  sides,  renders  this  relation  still  more 
precarious,  completely  sundered  and  separated 

TTammans  1ball 

43 

the  more  fortunate  social  strata  from  the  less 
fortunate,  in  which  lie  most  of  the  votes  of 
Tammany. 

Since  those  in  need  were,  for  the  most  part, 
strangers  in  a  strange  land,  without  personal 
relations,  a  vicarious  charity  system  devel- 
oped, under  which  most  New  Yorkers  com- 
muted the  personal  service  each  man  and 
woman  owes  to  those  about  him  in  want, 
into  a  money  payment.  While  this  disbursed 
the  vast  sums  which  render  New  York  City 
one  of  the  most  liberal  in  its  charities  the  world 
over,  it  divorced  and  deprived  these  char- 
ities of  the  personal  influence  which  is  the 
just  fruit  of  an  honest  personal  charity  which 
seeks,  first,  not  to  relieve  the  needs  of  another, 
but  to  discharge  one's  own  personal  debt  and 
duty  to  society,  and  the  relief  of  human  want. 
In  the  end,  also,  these  charities  themselves,  in 
more  than  one  instance,  became  the  scandal- 
ous beneficiaries  of  Tammany  Hall,  and  were 
harnessed  to  the  car  of  its  organization,  so  that 
their  work  presented  itself  to  a  great  mass  of 
the  poor  and  struggling  as  part  of  a  system 
which,  whether  it  plundered  the  rich  or  not, 
at  least  relieved  the  poverty-stricken. 

Lastly,  there  existed  the  pressure  of  American 
life,  quite  as  much  a  matter  of  nervous  imagi- 
nation as  of  actual  exertion,  and  the  more  seri- 
ous social  fact  that  a  torrid  summer  drove  from 
the  city  for  a  long  absence  the  class  which 

Cbaritics 
in 

Hew  £orfc 

44 

TTammans  Iball 

jfounfcas 
tfon  of 
Uamman^ 

was  most  needed  for  daily  personal  influence., 
women  of  character,  cultivation,  and  well-to- 
do  surroundings.  This  summer  absence  de- 
prived them  of  the  network  of  myriad  contact 
which  insensibly  diffuses  social  ideas.  The 
tenement-house  system,  due  to  the  limited 
area  of  the  city,  aggravated  and  exasperated 
all  these  conditions  by  preventing  among  the 
great  mass  of  its  population  those  neighbor- 
hood relations,  and  that  personal  acquaintance 
which  are  only  possible  where  each  family  has 
its  separate  home.  New  York  for  half  a  cen- 
tury has  been  berthed,  not  housed. 

Tammany  Hall  began  in  a  secret  organiza- 
tion, the  Tammany  Society  or  Columbian 
Order,  whose  membership  was  drawn  from 
the  precise  stratum  already  described.  Organ- 
ized a  little  over  a  century  ago,  the  political 
drift  of  this  Society,  and  the  political  organiza- 
tion which  grew  out  of  it,  was  for  forty  years 
towards  universal  suffrage  ;  for  forty  years  its 
tumultuous  gatherings  directed  a  growing  im- 
migrant population,  and  for  nearly  thirty,  the 
heads  of  this  body  have  led  a  well-organized 
body  of  all  classes,  partly  foreign  and  partly 
native,  for  the  exclusive  object  of  ruling  the 
city.  The  earliest  of  these  periods  ended„with 
the  first  elected  mayor  in  1834. 

It  saw  the  destruction  of  the  more  or  less 
aristocratic  society  of  the  colonial  period,  and 
the  opening  of  the  Erie  Canal,  both  incidents  in 

ZTammang  Ibali 

45 

the  commercial  expansion,  which  in  England 
led  to  the  Reform  Bill,  and  in  this  country  to 
universal  white  male  suffrage.  The  next 
period  ran  to  the  end  of  the  war,  and  saw 
New  York  established  as  the  gate  of  the  West, 
while  here,  1865  to  1870,  the  centralization  of 
Federal  power,  with  the  destruction  of  slavery, 
was  accomplished,  and  household  suffrage 
established  in  England.  The  third,  covering 
the  last  thirty  years,  has  been  marked  by  the 
transformation  in  all  fields  of  individual  into 
corporate  activity  and  the  multiplication  of  a 
myriad  complex  and  specialized  agencies, 
through  which  a  population  of  73,000,000 
nominally  carries  on  its  varied  business — 
social,  economic,  and  political — through  insti- 
tutions originally  devised  for  a  population  of 
3,000,000,  and  still  bearing  their  old  names. 

The  Tammany  Society,  which  on  its  cele- 
bration of  theter-centennial  of  Columbus's  dis- 
covery in  1792,  became  also  the  Columbian 
Order,  was  organized  by  William  Mooney,8 
an  upholsterer  by  trade,  and  its  first  celebra- 
tion, May  12,  1789,  on  the  banks  of  the  Hud- 
son, is  usually  treated  as  the  beginning  of  the 
society,  though  its  original  organization  took 
place  at  the  City  Hall,  and  it  was  itself  an  imi- 
tation of  an  earlier  Philadelphia  society.  In 
New  York,  as  elsewhere,  the  close  of  the  war 
saw  return  to  power  the  colonial  better  class, 
recruited  by  those  who  had  led  the  Revolution. 

TKIWltam 
ADooneg 

46 

Uammans  Ifoall 

Humbet 
of  Dotes 
Cast 

Tammany  stood  for  popular  resistance  to  this. 
New  York  City  had  a  restricted  suffrage  based 
on  a  property  qualification,  and  the  ancient 
forty-shilling  homeholder  of  the  English  bor- 
ough. The  population  of  the  city  in  1790, 
was  33,131,  and  its  voters  numbered  5,184,' 
of  whom  half,  or  2,661,  were  of  the  forty-shil- 
ling class,  not  owning  freeholds  to  the  value  of 
£20.  Even  at  this  early  date,  a  majority  of 
voters  were  without  a  property  stake,  and  less 
than  one-fourth,  or  1,209,  ne^  over  ^100  of 
realty.  Of  these  voters  less  than  one-half  came 
to  the  polls,  though  it  is  a  persistent  political 
fiction  that  in  earlier  and  better  days  all  good 
citizens,  when  all  citizens  were  good,  both 
voted  and  attended  the  primary. 

In  1789,  when  George  Clinton  defeated 
Robert  Yates,  only  2,760*  votes  were  cast,  or 
less  than  half  the  vote  lists.  To-day  a  vote  of 
90  per  cent,  of  the  registry  is  the  normal  pro- 
portion, and  the  registry  is  nearly  this  pro- 
portion of  the  vote.  Where  in  1790,  54  per 
cent,  of  the  registered  voters  seek  the  polls, 
the  proportion  now  is  for  the  most  part  over 
90  per  cent.  In  addition,  on  the  usual  basis, 
New  York  in  1790,  would  have  had  with  its 
population  a  vote  of  about  6,600,  so  that  about 
1,500  persons  must  have  been  disfranchised. 
An  important  work  which  Tammany  has  dis- 
charged, and  one  essential  to  the  final  success 
of  our  institutions,  is  of  breeding  the  habit  of 

{Tammany  1ball 

47 

voting.  Abroad,  in  France,  for  instance,  not 
over  half  the  voters  vote.  However,  it  has  failed 
at  other  points,  Tammany  has  always  been 
faithful  to  the  work  of  extending  the  basis  of 
suffrage,  so  far  as  white  males  were  concerned, 
and  in  drilling  them  to  the  habit  of  voting. 
There  is  to-day  no  voting  body  of  equal  size, 
or  approaching  its  size,  which  so  fully  exer- 
cises its  political  right  to  vote  as  that  on  Man- 
hattan Island.  The  work  of  ensuring  that  this 
vote  shall  be  cast  to  the  best  interests  of  the 
city  remains  to  be  done. 

In  1789,  government  was  still  in  the  hands 
of  the  few.  The  inauguration  of  Washington 
was  a  turning-point  in  more  than  Federal  af- 
fairs, and  the  Tammany  Society  represented 
more  than  one  of  its  events.  As  the  Indian 
was  driven  back  from  the  coast,  and  his 
character  and  habits  became  legendary,  there 
sprang  up  an  innocent  admiration  for  quali- 
ties which  Cooper  was  soon  to  make  a  part 
of  fiction,  and  which  were  never  a  part  of 
fact.  The  Middle  States,  in  particular,  had  been 
brought  into  close  contact  with  Indians  of  a 
tribe  and  type  less  savage  and  more  peaceful 
than  any  along  the  coast.  Among  the  Lenni 
Lenape  Indians,  Tamanend,  whose  grave  is 
still  cherished,6  and  whose  memory  was  long 
revered,  was  a  chief  who  signed  one  of  Penn's 
treaties,  purchasing  part  of  Philadelphia.  He 
became,  during  the  Revolution,  the  pseudopa- 

Uamanent>, 
tbe 
flnMan 
Chief 

48 

Uammany  Iball 

Zxibce  an& 
Uotems 

tron  saint  of  the  younger  officers  and  men  of 
the  line.    His  day,  May  12th,  replaced  that  of 
St.  George.   There  was  also  in  this  aboriginal 
worship  and  admiration,  relic  and  reflection  of 
Rousseau's  apotheosis  of  primitive  man  and 
the  dawn  of  a  protest  against  English  suprem- 
acy, always  strongest  in  an  American  com- 
munity in  the  stratum  from  which  Tammany's 
membership  was  drawn.    In  organizing  the 
new  society  in  New  York,  but  one  of  many, 
the  ritual  and  organization  of  an  Iroquois  lodge 
was  imitated,  and  the  "long  room"  at  Mart- 
ling's  had  its  name,  not  from  its  length,  but 
because  this  was  the  term,  still  familiar,  applied 
by  the  Indian  to  his  tribal  assembly-room. 
The  Tammany  Society  was,  therefore,  divided 
into  thirteen  tribes,6  each  with  its  totem,  and 
while  the  Society  itself  remained  active  in  its 
membership  and  meetings,  each  initiate  was 
assigned  to  one  of  these  tribes.    Time  and 
tendencies  are,  however,  stronger  in  deter- 
mining totems  than  paper  constitutions  and 
rituals.    The  symbol  upon  which  Tammany 
and  the  public  have  finally  settled,  with  the 
agreeable  unanimity  of  the  captor  and  his 
prey,  has  been  the  Tammany  Tiger,  first  em- 
blazoned on  the  engine  of  "Big  Six," 7 and 
conspicuous  under  Tweed  in  the  heavy  gold 
badge  of  the  Americus  Club.   The  year8  in  the 
ritual  of  the  Society  was  divided  into  the  four 
seasons,  and  their  elaborate  and  artificial  return 

TTammans  Iball 

49 

to  the  savage  still  appears  after  a  century  in 
the  advertised  notices  of  the  meetings  of  the 
Society,  jostling  more  modern  forms  and 
phrases.  These  mild  fooleries  were  all  only 
part  of  a  like  spirit  perpetually  out-cropping 
in  our  cities  in  "Sir  Knights,"  in  regalia,  and 
in  rituals  of  whose  complexion,  extent,  and 
important  influence  on  the  character  of  indi- 
viduals many  of  those  who  deem  themselves 
familiar  with  American  society  are  profoundly 
ignorant. 

Tammany's  original  political  action  was 
along  lines  suggested  by  the  "  Committee  of 
Correspondence,"  whose  revolutionary  plots, 
success  has  turned  into  patriotic  projects. 
It  formed  the  usual  medium  of  inter-state 
political  action  in  the  first  forty  years  after 
the  close  of  the  Revolution,  and  slowly  de- 
veloped into  its  present  system  of  party 
government.  Similar  Tammany  societies  had 
been  organized  in  other  States.  That  in 
Philadelphia,  parent  of  all  the  rest,  was  first 
organized  May  i,  1772,9  when  the  sons  of 
King  Tammany  met  at  the  house  of  James 
Byrns  to  celebrate  the  memory  of  a  chieftain 
already  associated  with  American  opposi- 
tion to  the  European  spirit.  Reorganized  in 
imitation  of  the  New  York  exemplar,  the 
Tammany  Society,  or  Columbian  Order  of 
Philadelphia,  at  the  Columbia  Wigwam,  on 
the  Schuylkill,  showed  its  opposition  May  12, 

©tber 
Societies 

5° 

TTammang  foall 

Creel: 

1798,  to  Federalism  and  its  sympathy  with 
the  French.  It  paraded  in  costume  in  honor 
of  Jefferson's  election,  its  Wiskinski  to  the 
front,  carrying  a  key  ;  it  celebrated,  in  1802, 
the  acquisition  of  Louisiana,  always  supported 
the  ruling  demagogues  of  a  day  of  demagogues, 
and  its  celebrations  were  still  in  progress 
in  1814.  In  Rhode  Island  10  it  was  not  until 
1 8 19  that  a  Tammany  Society  was  organized 
and  continued  for  five  years  with  various 
branches  and  much  success  to  lead  the  Demo- 
cratic party  to  short-lived  victory.  These 
societies,  wherever  organized,  displayed 
everywhere  the  same  revolt  of  the  class 
newly  arrived  to  the  suffrage,  or  desiring  it, 
and  made  in  all  places  the  same  appeal  in 
parade,  buck-tail,  and  ritual. 

The  original  Tammany  Society  was  at  first 
welcomed  as  an  aid  to  the  effort  Washington 
was  making  at  the  opening  of  his  Adminis- 
tration to  conciliate  all  classes  at  home,  and 
receive  peace  on  our  Indian  frontier.  A  year 
after  its  first  organization,  when  Col.  Mari- 
nus  Willett  brought  to  New  York  a  deputa- 
tion of  Creek  Indians,  they  were  the  guests 
of  Tammany  Society  during  their  visit.  The 
occasion  was  serious.  Our  Western  march 
was  barred  at  the  north  by  the  British  forts 
and  at  the  south  by  the  Creeks  and  Chero- 
kees,  the  most  powerful  confederacy  on  our 
frontier.    Their  reception  and  entertainment 

XTammanp  1baU 

51 

at  the  new  Federal  capital  by  the  Tammany 
Society,  in  full  costume  and  regalia,  was  a 
public  service  whose  importance  it  is  not 
easy  now  to  appreciate. 

Before  three  years  had  passed,  the  Tam- 
many Society  was  in  full,  though  unavowed, 
opposition  to  Washington's  Administration, 
its  first  conspicuous  sign  of  changing  views 
being  its  elaborate  celebration 11  of  the  landing 
of  Columbus,  October  12,  1792,  whose  odes, 
inscriptions,  and  ceremonies  were  devoted  to 
the  pledge  that : 

Secure  for  ever  and  entire 

The  Rights  of  Man  shall  here  remain. — 

language  which  in  that  day  and  date  was 
the  dialect  of  the  supporter  of  France  and 
the  opponent  of  the  policy  of  Washington. 
Two  months  later  the  Society  met,  Decem- 
ber 27,  1792,  to  celebrate  the  victory  of 
Dumouriez13 — a  meeting  whose  last  midnight 
and  perhaps  maudlin  toast  expressed  the  fer- 
vent hope  that  the  American  fair  would  ever 
keep  their  favors  for  the  Republican  brave. 
Nor  from  that  day  to  this  has  the  elaborate 
political  machinery  of  Tammany  Hall  failed 
to  appreciate  the  necessity  of  keeping  in  close 
union  the  social  pleasures  and  the  political 
action  of  great  masses  of  voters.  The  winter 
ball  and  the  summer  excursion,  whose  heavy 
expense  is  no  small  part  of  the  annual  budget 

Jfrencb 
Influence 

52 

Ttammang  Ibaii 

1Rew  J£le= 
tnents  fn 
IRew  Jgork 
1798 

of  a  district  leader  to-day,  echo  the  determi- 
nation of  the  toast  in  Brom  Martling's  Hall  a 
century  ago. 

The  Revolution  had  been  precipitated,  as 
far  as  physical  force  was  concerned,  by  "  Lib- 
erty Boys,"  led  by  a  few  men  who  repre- 
sented the  secondary  colonial  aristocracy  of 
wealth,  for  which  Adams  stood  in  Massa- 
chusetts, Clinton  in  New  York,  and  Morris  in 
Pennsylvania.  Ten  years  after  the  struggle 
found  the  officer  better  rewarded  than  the 
private  both  by  Legislatures  and  the  public. 
Mooney  had  been  a  violent  "  Liberty  Boy." 
He  and  his  found  little  to  admire  in  the  wait- 
ing policy  of  Washington.  The  turmoil  of 
Europe  added  immigration  to  domestic  fer- 
ment, and  the  Revolution  of  '98  sent  to  New 
York  the  ablest  Irish  immigrants  of  the  cen- 
tury, the  last  immigration  of  birth,  abroad. 
With  it  closed  colonial  conditions  of  political 
emigration.  Thenceforward  European  emi- 
gration was  economic.  New  York's  trade 
was  gaining  what  Philadelphia  lost  by  yellow 
fever.  The  Tammany  Society  became  the 
nucleus  about  which  centred  the  unsatisfied 
turbulence  of  the  Revolution,  the  rapidly  in- 
creasing ranks  of  labor  deprived  of  a  vote,  and 
the  new  wave  of  immigration  stung  to  bitter 
revolt  against  Federalism  by  the  Alien  and 
Sedition  laws  of  1798.  The  immediate  local 
leader  was  Daniel  D.  Tompkins,  a  young 

XTammanE  Dall 

53 

graduate  of  Columbia,  who  began  his  political 
career  by  marrying  the  daughter  of  the  Alder- 
man of  his  ward,  and,  having  married  her, 
demonstrated  his  right  to  become  a  district 
leader  by  carrying  his  ward,  the  Seventh,  and 
reversing,  in  1800,  the  Federal  majority  of 
200  in  the  year  before.  He  ended  his  typical 
Tammany  career  under  charges  of  pecuniary 
dishonesty.  His  integrity  was  in  the  end  vin- 
dicated, but  only  at  the  expense  of  his  admin- 
istrative ability.13 

For  ten  years,  after  George  Clinton,  in 
1789,  by  a  narrow  majority  of  429,  defeated 
Robert  Yates,  the  candidate  of  a  conserva- 
tive reaction,  the  rapid  development  of  poli- 
tics went  on.  The  population  doubled.  The 
voters  increased  but  two  thirds;  in  1801, 
8,088.  The  men  without  a  vote  trebled.  Dan- 
gers environ  a  democratic  community  when 
population  outstrips  voters.  The  halves  of 
the  city  pulled  apart.  Realty  owners  over 
S500  in  value  doubled.  Men  owning  $100  to 
$500  nearly  disappeared.  The  landless  40- 
shilling  householder  more  than  doubled.  The 
landless  voteless  men  trebled.  Tammany 
steadily  gravitated  from  social  to  political  ac- 
tion. It  denounced  Jay's  treaty,  and  the  dis- 
tinguished author  of  the  Louisiana  code  began 
his  public  career  by  flinging  the  missile  which 
cut  open  the  face  of  Hamilton.  It  went  in  a 
body  to  help  fortify  Governor's  Island  when 

flDen 
witbout 
Dotes 

54 

TTammans  Iball 

Uammans 
Meetings 

war  with  England  looked  near.  It  welcomed 
Priestley,  but  his  New  York  friends  did  not, 
as  in  Philadelphia,  attend  his  sermons.  Its 
reception  to  the  discoverer  of  oxygen  was  the 
last  sign  of  the  scientific  interest  which,  in 
1790,  led  to  an  American  Historical  Museum, 
first  opened  in  the  City  Hall,  and  removed 
later  by  Gardiner  Baker,  its  founder  and  cura- 
tor, to  the  open  triangular  space  where  Broad 
and  Pearl  join.  Three  weeks  after  its  recep- 
tion to  the  fugitive  from  the  mob  of  Birming- 
ham, the  society  surrendered  to  the  curator 
its  museum  on  condition  that  it  should  bear 
its  name,  and  that  its  members  should  enjoy 
a  family  free  ticket,  an  early  application  of  the 
principle  of  free  passes  which  has  distin- 
guished the  Society  for  a  century. 

Meeting,  as  most  of  the  societies  of  the  day 
did,  in  a  tavern,  Tammany  began  at  Borden's  in 
lower  Broadway,  and  its  annual  procession  on 
May  12th,  "St.  Tammany,"  and  July  4th,  for 
the  "  long  talks  "  and  "short  talks  "  of  its  cele- 
bration, marched  up  Broadway  with  feathers 
and  leggins  to  the  old  Presbyterian  Church  on 
Wall  Street  or  to  the  Brick  Church  which 
faced  City  Hall  Square,  on  the  triangle  at 
whose  apex  is  the  New  York  Times  building. 
In  1798,  it  moved  to  Martling's,  on  the  south- 
east corner  of  Nassau  and  Spruce  Streets. 

This  long,  low  building,  opening  on  Nassau, 
was  kept  by  "  Brom  "  Martling  (Abraham  B. 

Uammans  Iball 

55 

Martling),  and  for  twenty  years,  even  after  a 
new  hall  was  built,  the  members  of  the  Soci- 
ety, and  the  political  party  which  clustered 
about  it,  were  known  as  "  Martling  men." 
The  use  of  Tammany  as  a  political  term  did 
not  begin  in  1818,  but  until  that  date  was  in- 
frequent.   It  became  common,  not  because 
the  Tammany  Society  itself  grew  more  imme- 
diate in  its  political  action,  but  because  it  had 
built  the  first  of  its  permanent  homes.  Incor- 
porated in  1805,  during  the  next  ten  years 
Tammany  Hall  men  held  the  most  lucrative 
posts  in  a  Federal  administration  far  more  ex- 
travagant in  the  emoluments  of  its  offices 
than  in  the  present  day,  when  salaries  have 
replaced  fees.    The  city  itself  was  passing 
through  a  period  of  rapid  commercial  expan- 
sion, whose  first  check  was  the  embargo, 
which  Tammany  supported,  with  the  result, 
as  a  fruit  of  the  policy  of  which  the  embargo 
was  a  part,  that  the  relative  growth  of  the 
city  was  less  than  one  half  as  rapid  in  the  sec- 
ond decade  of  the  century  as  in  the  first.  In 
181 1,  at  the  end  of  the  first  decade,  Colonel 
Rutgers  was  able  to  raise  $28,000,  a  large 
sum,  but  no  more  than  a  single  Tammany 
Federal  officer  had  drawn  in  a  year  as  fees,  and 
"Martling's  Long  Room"  was  replaced,  not 
far  from  its  site,  by  the  first  Tammany  Hall,  at 
the  corner  of  Frankfort  Street  and  Park  Row. 
The  walls  of  the  building  then  erected  still 

XEbe  jfirst 
JBuHMng 
1811 

56 

TEammang  1ball 

jfuneral 
t>onor0 

stand,  the  office  of  the  New  York  San.  It  held 
originally  a  hall  and  hotel,  where  board  was 
$7  a  week,  the  second  leading  hotel  of  the 
city.  It  had  behind  it  the  shipyards  and  tan- 
neries on  the  East  River.  It  had  before  it  the 
City  Hall.  The  better  residence  quarter  was 
passing  up  the  island,  along  another  channel 
in  whose  currents  Tammany  Hall  has  never 
found  the  stream  to  grind  its  mill. 

"  Martling's  Long  Room  "  had  been  the  re- 
sort of  "  Sons  of  Liberty  "  and  of  the  "  Sons  of 
1776."  The  close  connection  was  one  of  the 
causes  which  made  it  natural  for  Tammany 
Society  to  give  funeral  honors  to  the  bones 
of  the  Revolutionary  prisoners  of  war,  of 
whom  11,500  had  sickened  and  died  in  Brit- 
ish prison-hulks,  treated  with  no  more  and  no 
less  inhumanity  than  was  the  brutal  custom 
of  the  day.  Congress  had  neglected,  in  180^, 
the  memorial  of  the  Society.  In  1807,  Tam- 
many appointed  a  committee,  and  a  year 
later,  May  26,  1808,  Tammany  Society  in  its 
regalia,  the  buck-tail  conspicuous,  led  a  civic 
procession  which  buried  the  bleached  bones, 
and  returned  to  the  weather-beaten,  unpainted 
structure  which  had  survived  the  Revolution. 
Its  bar-room  was  on  Spruce,  its  kitchen  on 
Nassau.  Its  "long  room"  ran  parallel  with 
the  latter.  Built  when  a  mere  road  ran  before 
it  up  the  island,  the  street  had  risen  in  grade. 
The  floor  of  the  hall  was  reached  by  two 

Uammanp  Ibali 

57 

or  three  descending  steps.  Uncouth,  dirty, 
stained,  the  merest  shanty,  it  was  known  by 
Federalist  opponents  as  "the  pig-pen."  It 
deserved  the  name.  Its  selection,  and  Bor- 
den's, the  churches  in  which  the  Society  held 
its  larger  and  more  decorous  meetings,  Camp- 
bell's in  Greenwich  village,  where  its  May  and 
summer  outings  were  held,  all  bespoke  the 
small  merchant,  retailer,  and  mechanic,  out  of 
whose  ranks  the  Tammany  machine  was  to 
grow  and  to  control  the  vast  foreign  vote  of 
the  future. 

The  Federal  party  lost  its  power  and  its 
head  together,  and  drove  the  immigrant  into 
Democratic  support  by  passing  the  Alien  and 
Sedition  laws.  In  spite  of  this  it  won  the 
Congressional  election  of  1798,  and  the  scan- 
dal attending  Burr's  Manhattan  Bank  charter 
gave  the  Federalists  the  city  by  900  majority 
in  1799.  Sinking  step  by  step,  from  Wash- 
ington to  Clinton,  and  from  Clinton  to  Tam- 
many, he  came  to  New  York,  organized  the 
landless  vote,  which  could  not  elect  a  Gov- 
ernor but  could  determine  the  choice  of  Fed- 
eral electors,  and  the  spring  election  of  1800 
saw  the  first  New  York  contest  in  which 
voters  were  enrolled,  canvassed,  and  voted 
with  ordered  precision.  "  Faggot  "-voters 
were  created  by  uniting  a  number  of  men  in 
the  ownership  of  the  same  property,  poor  men 
were  deeded  free-holds,  the  Society  kept  open 

TTbe  afiret 
Victors 

58 

XTammans  Iball 

^Beginnings 
of  political 
fjistors 

house  in  its  hall,  voters  were  carried  to  the 
poll,  the  last  man  was  voted,  and  the  first 
victory  of  Tammany  Hall  was  won. 

Jefferson  was  elected  President  and  Tam- 
many was  placed  in  the  relative  position 
which  it  has  ever  since  occupied.  In  New 
York  City  it  had  opposed  to  it,  the  well-to-do, 
the  better-educated,  and  the  mass  of  property- 
holders.  In  the  State,  the  State  Administra- 
tion and  the  vote  of  the  State  was  in  general 
marshalled  in  the  opposing  party.  The  in- 
stant its  leader,  Aaron  Burr,  appeared  in 
Washington,  where  he  had  been  nominated 
for  Vice-President,  and  began  to  act  for  him- 
self in  national  affairs,  Tammany  broke  with 
him  and  united  with  his  enemies,  as  Tam- 
many has  dealt  ever  since  with  every  political 
leader  in  New  York  State  of  its  own  party 
who  with  or  without  its  votes,  rose  to  a  na- 
tional position  and  began  a  national  career. 
Lastly,  without  backing  in  the  Northern  States, 
except  in  the  Tammany  societies  of  the  larger 
cities,  the  new  organization  found  its  natural 
allies  in  the  Southern  slave  States,  and  re- 
ceived first  from  Jefferson  and  later  from  Madi- 
son and  Monroe  the  aid  of  Federal  patronage, 
which,  as  Governor  DeWitt  Clinton  charged 
twenty  years  later,  was  "an  organized  and 
disciplined  corps  in  our  elections."" 

The  political  history  of  Tammany  Hall  be- 
gan with  this  victory.    The  Society  and  its 

TTammans  ttmll 

59 

committee  of  correspondence  gave  a  nucleus 
for  political  action,  secrecy,  and  contact  with 
other  States.    The  "general  meeting"  gath- 
ered voters  for  assemblies  which  ratified 
nominations  and  passed  resolutions  already 
decided  in  the  Society.    Federal  offices  gave 
patronage  and  the  Albany  Legislature  a  long 
series  of  corrupt  transactions  in  which  nearly 
all  public  men  shared.    When  Burr,  in  1804, 
was  nominated  for  Governor,  Tammany  Hall, 
following  Jefferson's  wishes  and  its  own 
inclination,  supported  Morgan  Lewis.  He 
was  nominated  at  a  Legislative  caucus,  whose 
chairman,  Ebenezer  Purdy,  was  later  expelled 
from  the  Senate  for  corrupt  practices;  and 
whose  clerk,  Solomon  Southwick,  was  later 
charged  with  bribery  in  procuring  the  charter 
of  the  Bank  of  America.15  DeWitt  Clinton, 
the  municipal  rival  of  Burr,  resigned  his  seat  in 
the  United  States  Senate  to  become  Mayor,  a 
post  with  four  times  the  salary  of  the  Federal 
position  and  proportionately  greater  power, 
the  first  instance,  frequent  through  the  century, 
of  a  Tammany  man  preferring  the  better-filled 
manger  of  its  service  to  the  higher  but  emptier 
stall  of  a  national  career.    As  with  all  its 
Mayors,  Tammany  early  gave  him  the  alterna- 
tives of  submission,  retirement,  or  the  organ- 
ization of  his  own  political  machine.  Men 
like  Clinton,  Wood,  and  Grace  have  done  the 
last.    Men  like  Hone  and  Hewitt,  the  second. 

DetUttt 
Clinton 
1812-1818 

6o 

UammanE  iball 

Elections 

Other  more  recent  Tammany  Mayors  have  se- 
lected the  first. 

The  precise  difference  in  Clinton's  case  had 
as  its  occasion,  not  its  cause,  his  sentence  of 
Gulian  C.  Verplanck  for  his  share  in  the  riot 
which  marked  public  disapproval  of  the  Fed- 
eralist sympathies  of  the  Columbia  College 
authorities.    Separating  himself  from  the  sys- 
tem which  placed  in  a  caucus  of  Congressmen, 
at  Washington  the  nomination  of  President,  De 
Witt  Clinton  began  the  modern  national  con- 
vention, and  organized  the  alliance  between 
the  interior  of  New  York  and  the  Federal  Whig 
and  Republican  vote  of  the  city  which  oppo- 
sition to  Tammany  has  marshalled  through 
the  century  on  all  State  and  National  issues. 
Tammany  had  developed  from  its  own  ranks, 
Tompkins,  its  leader  in  this  struggle  ;  he  had 
the  support  of  Ambrose  Spencer  and  other 
Federal  office-holders  under  him.  Tammany 
Hall  vigorously  supported  the  war  of  1812,  a 
most  important  public  service.    It  aided  in  op- 
posing Federal  aid  to  the  Canals,  which  were, 
under  De  Witt  Clinton,  at  length  built  after 
political  victories,  due  to  his  city  machine, 
which  organized  a  lower  level  than  Tammany, 
as  Wood  and  Morrissey  did  later,  and  the  in- 
terior rural  vote,  first  Tompkins's  and  later  his. 
Through  all,  Tammany  steadily  held  its  grip  on 
the  city.   In  1818,  its  entire  ticket  for  Congress 
and  its  corporation  officers  were  chosen  by 

Uammans  t)all 

61 

1,200  majority.16  In  18 19,  its  average  majority 
on  Assemblymen  was  2,301  and  on  Senators, 
elected  by  a  limited  suffrage,  850.17  One  year 
later,  the  ''Tammanies,"  thanks  to  various 
coalitions  in  the  State,  had  41  Assemblymen, 
the  Federals  39,  and  the  Clintonian  Republicans 
46.    These  dissensions  in  Democracy,  Niles 
lamented,  as  Democratic  editors  did  like  divi- 
sions due  to  like  causes  seventy  and  eighty 
years  later.18  From  year  to  year,  through  this 
period,  the  Tammany  Society  and  the  General 
Meeting  issued  addresses  to  the  branches  of  the 
one,  and  the  Democratic-Republican  fellow- 
citizens  of  the  other,  deploring  in  18 17  the 
spread  of  the  "foreign"  game  of  billiards 
among  the  upper,  and  vice  among  the  lower  ; 
and  in  1 8 19 19  its  address  led  Adams,  who  with 
Jefferson  and  Madison  responded  to  its  utter- 
ances, to  wish  it  success  "  in  discountenancing 
all  pernicious  customs  and  usages,  and  devia- 
tion from  a  wise  and  virtuous  national  econ- 
omy."   Through  all  its  first  period,  Tammany 
spoke  with  the  accent  of  a  middle-class  preci- 
sian.   In  the  next  period,  it  sank  to  the  street- 
rough.    In  the  close  of  the  third,  grew  up  the 
intimate  connection  of  some,  not  all,  of  its 
leaders,  with  the  semi-criminal  classes.  But 
this  affected  only  a  part.    The  great  mass  of 
the  active  membership  of  Tammany  Hall  as  a 
political  organization  has  always  consisted  of 
the  civic  stratum  made  up  of  daily  labor  with 

stone  an& 
dbanges 

62 

XTamman^  Iball 

"{Transition 
182U1830 

its  immediate  direction  in  the  stratum  just 
above. 

A  Tammany  "general  meeting"  began  the 
movement  which  ended  in  the  constitution  of 
1 82 1  and  white  male  suffrage.  This  somewhat 
increased  the  number  of  voters,  but  not  much. 
Under  a  restricted  suffrage,  the  ingenuity  of 
politicians  manufactured  a  registry  of  19,925 
voters  in  New  York  City  in  1821,  where  the 
census  in  1826  could  count  only  18,283  adult 
male  citizens.  The  real  change  was  an  in- 
crease in  the  habit  of  voting.  In  1826,  only 
31.12  per  cent,  of  the  voters  voted  ;  in  1828, 
75.69 ;  and  by  1840, 91.96  percent. — themodern 
average.  Nor  had  naturalization  added  much 
to  the  vote.  Even  in  1840,  the  New  York 
Assembly  had  in  it  but  one  person  of  foreign 
birth50  and  75  were  native  to  the  State.  In  1855, 
New  York  City  still  had  46,173  native  and 
42,704  naturalized  voters  ;  in  1855,  51,500 
native  and  77,475  naturalized  ;  in  1875,  90,- 
973  native  and  141,179  naturalized.  This 
eloquent  proportion  remains  the  rule.  Yet  the 
earlier  American  municipality  was  a  filthy, 
pestilential  city,  enduring  countless  nuisances, 
with  a  general  death-rate  comparable  to  the 
tenement-house  districts  of  seventy  years  later. 

Tammany  shared  with  the  rest  our  transi- 
tion period,  1820- 1830,  Buck-tails  casting  in 
their  lot  with  Van  Buren's  Jackson  men,  and 
Clintonians  developing  into  anti-Masons  — 

Tammany  frnll 

63 

spurred  by  the  wide  influence  of  secret  soci- 
eties like  Tammany — and  Whigs.  For  a  few 
years,  an  election  of  mayor  by  the  aldermen 
put  Tammany  at  a  disadvantage,  as  the  Whigs 
held  the  less  populous  wards,  and  the  succes- 
sive ballotings  were  full  of  shameless  scandal. 
When  a  constitutional  amendment,  1833, 
made  the  mayoralty  elective,  Cornelius  A. 
Lawrence  was  nominated,  1834,  after  old  forms. 
Posters  announced  the  "general  meeting."  A 
flag  was  hoisted  over  Tammany  Hall.  The 
hall  was  open  to  all  comers.  He  polled  1 7, 575 
votes,  and  his  Whig  opponent,  Gulian  C.  Ver- 
planck,  17,373.  Since  then  the  tides  of  votes 
have  ebbed  and  flowed  with  a  periodical 
regularity.81  Tammany  held  five  successive 
terms  and  the  opposition  two;  the  organiza- 
tion elected  five  mayors  and  the  opposition 
one  ;  Tammany  two  and  the  opposition  one  ; 
Tammany  one  and  the  opposition  two  ;  Tam- 
many three  and  the  opposition  four  ;  Tam- 
many four  and  the  opposition  one;  Tammany 
two  and  the  opposition  one  ;  two  candidates 
endorsed  by  Tammany  and  the  opposition 
one  ;  a  compromise  candidate  and  Tammany 
three  ;  the  opposition  one,  and  Tammany  the 
last.  This  steady  alternation  has  given  Tam- 
many about  two  thirds  of  the  mayors,  and 
its  periods  of  defeat  and  victory  have  only  been 
broken  (during  the  war)  by  Fernando  Wood 
and  the  Mozart  Hall  Democracy. 

BIternas 
Hon 

Of  X>0tC9 

64 

Uammanp  Iball 

Gbanges 
1835*1838 

Tammany  Hall,  in  full  communion  with 
Jackson,  was  already  in  fatal  alliance  v/ith 
Southerners,  who  figured  as  prominently  as 
its  speech-makers  then  as  now.23  In  1831, 
the  Hall  made  the  serious  blunder  of  trying  to 
support  Jackson  and  to  sympathize  with  South 
Carolina  in  the  same  resolutions.  New  York 
was  roused,  and  a  great  meeting  of  merchants 
passed  an  uncompromising  resolution.  The 
blunder  severed  a  reputable  vote  never  re- 
gained. The  Equal  Rights,  or,  as  we  should 
say,  labor  party,  in  1829  cut  off  another  body 
of  voters.  Growing,  the  new  labor  party  in 
October,  1835,  started  from  its  Bowery  head- 
quarters 53  and  stormed  the  1 1  general  meeting  " 
in  a  riot  which  gave  birth  to  the  "  loco-foco  " 
party,  which  owes  its  name  to  the  matches 
used  when  the  Tammany  janitor  turned  off 
the  gas.  In  1837,  after  two  Tammany  vic- 
tories, the  split  cost  the  mayoralty, — Aaron 
Clark,  Whig,  17,044;  John  D.  Morgan,  Demo- 
crat, 13,763  ;  and  Moses  Jaques,  bolter,  4,- 
239.  Again,  in  1838,  Tammany  was  defeated, 
borne  down  by  the  scandal  of  wholesale  de- 
falcations, Samuel  Swartwout,  Collector,  for 
$1,200,000,  and  William  M.  Price,  District 
Attorney,  for  $75,000.  Both  fled,  and  neither 
was  pursued.  The  public  conscience  was  in- 
conceivably low.  ' 1  Defalcations  are  no  crime, " 
said  a  leading  New  York  paper24  in  a  cynical 
vein.   For  five  years,  for  the  pendulum  swung 

XTammanp  1ball 

65 

back  in  1839,  ^saac  L.  Varian  winning  by  a 
narrow  majority,  Tammany  Hall  elected  its 
mayor  by  a  constantly  increasing  plurality  and 
an  enlarging  poll,  which,  in  1844,  prompted 
charges  of  fraud  from  Whigs  who  found,  as 
often  since,  that  Tammany  won  as  well  with- 
out Federal  and  State  patronage  as  with. 
Twice,  1844  and  1845,  the  American  party 
elected  its  candidate,  James  Harper,  but  dis- 
appeared as  rapidly  as  it  had  arisen,  and,  in 
1846,  Tammany  elected  W.  F.  Havemeyer  by 
the  crushing  majority  of  6,822. 

The  victory  was  decisive.  The  city  was 
passing  out  of  its  provincial  stage.  A  police 
force  was  about  to  be  organized.  The  water 
works  were  completed.  The  internal  trade 
and  foreign  commerce  of  the  city  were  about 
to  enter  on  the  amazing  expansion  which  cul- 
minated in  1857.  The  adoption  of  a  new  con- 
stitution and  its  re-apportionment  gave  the 
Democrats  an  advantage  retained  for  thirty 
years.  Immigration  was  transforming  the 
city.  When  the  Mayor  first  became  elective, 
American  workmen  and  Whig  majorities  held 
the  first  to  the  fifth  wards  in  the  lower  end  of 
the  Island  and  went  up  the  ridge  with  the 
eighth  and  fifteenth  wards.  The  new  foreign 
element  had  settled  in  the  low  ground  of  the 
sixth,  and  the  seventh  and  ninth  to  fourteenth 
were  Tammany.  Fifteen  years  later,  the  lower 
end  of  the  Island  was  Irish  and  Democratic, 

©rowing 
Supreme 

66 

Uammany  Ibali 

©rowing 
Suprems 

\850*\853 

and  the  AmericanWhig  mechanic  was  elbowed 
north  and  west,  coloring  the  seventh,  ninth, 
and  thirteenth  wards,  long  Whig  and  later  Re- 
publican. 

If  Tammany  lost  two  or  three  elections, 
1847,  1849,  in  part  because  its  vigorous  sup- 
port of  the  Mexican  War  was  unpopular,  its 
supremacy  was  growing,  and  in  1850,  Fernan- 
do Wood,  the  first  man  who  attempted  to  be 
boss  in  Tammany  Hall  after  fifty  years  of  joint 
leadership,  organized  the  brute  vote  which  ra- 
diated from  the  ' '  bloody  Sixth. "  Beaten  for  the 
first  two-year  term  by  Ambrose  C.  Kingsland, 
Whig,  who  polled  the  Free  Soil  Democratic 
vote,  predecessors  of  the  1 '  State  Democ- 
racy," two  years  later,  1852-1856,  Wood  was 
laid  aside  for  Jacob  A.  Westervelt,  who  was 
pulled  through  by  the  Presidency  and  Seymour, 
in  1852,  with  10,000  majority.  In  1853,  the 
Democratic  party  split  into  "Softs"  and 
"Hards."  Slavery  is  the  cause  usually  assigned.1 
The  real  one  was  that  the  "  Hards,"  the  repu- 
table office-holders,  were  vainly  trying  to  hold 
power  against  the  rising  tide  of  rowdy  "  plug- 
ugly  "  and  bruiser  led  by  Wood  and  organized 
in  "clubs,"  "gangs,"  and  fire  engine  compa- 
nies, and  all  the  manifold  machinery  by  which 
an  ignorant  foreign  vote  and  a  depraved  native 
vote  as  ignorant,  was  manned,  managed,  ma- 
nipulated, and  made  ready  to  share  and  dare 
the  plunder  of  the  city  ten  years  later  under 

XTammang  Dall 


Tweed.  Winning  the  regular  Tammany 
nomination  in  1854,  Wood  was  elected  over  a 
divided  vote,  polling  but  20,033  out  °f  5^'" 
972  votes  cast.  With  his  term  began  the  re- 
version to  earlier  methods  in  the  attempt  to 
govern  New  York  from  Albany  through  a  non- 
partisan police.  It  failed,  and  only  gave  a  new 
demonstration  that  Tammany's  power  is  inde- 
pendent of  mere  patronage.  Enjoying  boss 
control  of  party  machinery,  Wood,  in  1856, 
polled  ninety-nine  votes  against  ten  for  all 
other  candidates  in  the  regular  Tammany  con- 
vention." A  most  reputable  bolting  conven- 
tion nominated  James  C.  Libby.  He  polled 
scarcely  5,000  votes  and  Wood  34,566,  a  plu- 
rality of  9,384  over  his  next  antagonist,  Isaac 
O.  Baker,  the  Know-nothing  candidate.  In 
the  regular  course,  Wood  would  have  become 
and  remained  the  first  boss  of  Tammany  Hall. 
His  respectable  opponents  had  control,  how- 
ever, of  the  Tammany  Society.  A  hot  canvass, 
in  1857,  ended  in  the  selection  of  a  Board 
of  Sachems,  who,  by  a  vote  of  seven  to  six, 
closed  the  doors  on  Wood  and  his  General 
Committee.  For  the  first  time,  the  Tammany 
Society,  which  is  only  the  landlord  of  the 
political  body  which  leases  its  hall,  exercised 
its  singular  power  of  deciding  between  rival 
organizations.  Again  in  1872,  it  closed  its 
doors.  During  the  last  illness  of  John  Kelly, 
it  was  deemed  possible  that  it  might  be 


68 


ZTammang  1ball 


Close 
of  tbc 


called  upon  again  to  decide  between  rival 
claimants. 

Driven  from  Tammany  Hall,  Wood  found 
the  city  alarmed  and  aroused,  and,  in  1857,  he 
was  defeated  by  Daniel  F.  Tiemann,  a  Demo- 
cratic candidate  who  gathered  to  his  support 
all  dissentient  elements,  the  first  instance  in 
the  history  of  the  city.  Organizing  Mozart 
Hall,  in  1859,  Wood  defeated  divided  op- 
ponents and  was  elected  Mayor  a  third  time 
in  a  canvass  in  which  the  Democratic  vote 
was  evenly  divided.  The  war  now  broke  the 
continuity  of  local  traditions.  Tammany  Hall 
organized  a  regiment,  the  426.  New  York,  and 
sent  it  to  the  front,  and  its  monument,  with 
its  Indian  wigwam  and  Indian  chief,  was 
dedicated  at  Gettysburg,  September  24,  1891.26 
Of  the  steady  service  of  the  regiment,  its  record 
in  thirty-six  battles  and  engagements  is  a  suffi- 
cient proof.  The  war  period  saw  George 
Opdyke,  the  only  Mayor  New  York  has  ever 
had  elected  on  a  Republican  ticket,  chosen  by 
613  votes  over  two  Democratic  candidates, 
Wood  and  Gunther.  Two  years  later  a  brief- 
lived  "  Hall,"  led  by  John  McKeon,  elected 
C.  Godfrey  Gunther  over  a  combined  Tam- 
many and  Mozart  Hall  candidate  by  6,524 
votes. 

The  close  of  the  war  found  Tammany  Hall, 
whose  local  ranks  were  bitterly  disloyal,  di- 
vided, defeated,  and  discredited.  If  it  promptly 


Ttammang  Iball 

69 

rose  to  supreme  civic  power  and  decided  the 
national  Democratic  nomination  in  1868,  it 
was  because  it  represented  certain  stable  social 
conditions  and  a  permanent  political  force. 
New  York  was  now  a  city,  and  no  accretion 
of  population  or  territory  has  altered  its  char- 
acter. Its  great  population  was,  and  for  forty 
years  and  more  was  destined  to  remain,  with 
a  majority  of  foreign  birth.  With  this  ma- 
jority was  associated  another  great  stratum, 
descendants  of  the  Irish  immigration  of  twenty 
years  before.  The  two  were  crowded  to- 
gether in  a  great  tract  of  dense  population, 
the  needs  of  whose  days  and  the  amusements 
of  whose  nights  were  furnished  by  the  grocer, 
the  retailer,  and  the  liquor-seller,  while  the 
associations  best  known  and  most  familiar 
were  those  of  the  volunteer  fire  company,  the 
beer  garden,  and  the  "club"  dance-house. 
Reorganized  with  district  leaders  drawn  from 
these  sources,  Tammany  Hall  was  led  by 
Tweed  in  the  riotous  assault  of  its  chiefs  on 
the  city  treasury,  while  the  rank  and  file  be- 
lieved themselves  on  the  high  road  to  regain 
the  Democratic  supremacy  enjoyed  before  the 
war.  After  the  fall  of  Tweed,  crushed  by  the 
revelation  of  his  wholesale  plunder — though 
if  he  had  gone  to  England  instead  of  to  jail 
he  might  have  returned  to  power — Tammany 
was  again  reorganized  by  John  Kelly,  a  man 
of  a  different  type,  sober,  patient,  industrious, 

IRcorganfs 
3ation 

7° 

UammanE  IDail 

rbe 
"Killers 

of 
Uams 
mans 

and  of  such  honesty  as  was  possible  for  a  man 
bred  in  his  surroundings.   Of  the  three  bosses 
of  Tammany  Hall,  I  once  reported  the  sentence 
of  the  first  for  his  embezzlements,  and  the  trial 
of  the  third  for  murder;  the  second  once  said  to 
me,  when,  in  a  moment  of  youthfulenthusiasm, 
I  urged  on  him  the  demerits  of  a  local  candidate 
for  district  judge,  "  If  I  go  into  these  local 
fights,  I  can't  pick  good  men  for  the  Supreme 
Court,  which  is  my  business."    To  this  busi- 
ness, he  devoted  himself  for  ten  years  of  pa- 
tient and  stubborn  assiduity,  accepting  the 
evils  he  found  and  increasing  them  by  con- 
solidating the  power  of  the  organization  he 
led — in  some  sort  its  Augustus.  He  found  it  a 
horde.    He  left  it  apolitical  army.    In  1 87 1 , 
by  bolting  the  nomination  of  Lucius  Robinson, 
he  detached  this  army  from  all  allegiance  but 
that  of  Tammany  Hall.    This  supreme  stroke 
of  statecraft  completed  the  slow  development 
of  a  century  by  rendering  the  boss  of  Tam- 
many a  supreme  ruler  within  his  political 
limits.    Twice  he  elected  his  mayors,  Wick- 
ham,  1874,  and  Ely,  1876;  once  he  was  de- 
feated, Schell  by  Cooper,  1878,  and  twice  he 
accepted  a  coalition  Democrat,  Grace,  1880, 
and  Edson,  1882,  but  he  ended  with  the  elec- 
tion, 1884,  of  Grant,  a  straight  Tammany  can- 
didate.    After  his  death,  John  Kelly  was 
succeeded  by  Richard  Croker,  a  man  whose 
reign  is  still  too  incomplete  to  admit  of  com- 

UammanE  Dall 

71 

plete  analysis.  An  investigation  in  1894 
showed,  however,  that  the  early  and  direct 
plunder  of  Tweed  had  been  replaced  in  the  city 
government  of  New  York  by  indirect  pillage 
through  blackmail,  whose  responsibility  Tam- 
many shares  with  other  political  organizations, 
but  in  which  its  portion  was  larger,  its 
methods  more  systematic,  and  its  evil  success 
more  complete. 

The  political  army  which  has  raised  these 
three  bosses  to  despotic  rule,  and  won  this 
extraordinary  succession  of  political  victories 
through  a  century,  has  slowly  reached  its 
present  organization  under  which  a  single 
man  exercises  unchallenged  supremacy.  When 
New  York  had  5,000  voters,  a  single  hall  en- 
abled a  majority  of  the  majority  of  these 
voters  to  meet  and  decide  the  nominations 
and  the  general  policy  of  the  party.  This 
"  general  meeting"  is,  by  two  channels  of 
succession,  the  lineal  predecessor  of  the  Gen- 
eral Committee  which  now  crowds  Tammany 
Hall,  able  to  accommodate  only  a  third  of  the 
body  which  is  supposed  to  meet  there. 
During  the  first  thirty  years  of  Tammany,  the 
"  general  meeting"  had  two  functions;  it 
directly  made  nominations  and  issued  ad- 
dresses, which  later  became  platforms.  This 
use  of  the  "  general  meeting  "  survives  in  the 
direct  use  of  the  ' '  general  committee"  as  a 
county  convention  to  nominate  county  officers 

Ubc 
"©eneral 
faceting  " 

72 

TTamntans  1ball 

Ube 
Meetings 

without  calling  primaries  or  electing  delegates 
for  the  purpose.  The  "general  committee" 
is  to-day,  however,  the  symbol  rather  than 
the  survival  of  the  "  general  meeting,"  which 
was  once  the  ultimate  authority  in  Tammany 
Hall. 

At  the  "general  meetings  "  committees  were 
appointed  to  prepare  addresses  and  to  carry 
on  the  campaign.  These  also  acted  as  "com- 
mittees of  correspondence,"  following  Revo- 
lutionary precedent,  an  atrophied  organ  still 
surviving  in  the  "Committee  on  Correspon- 
dence." 27  Each  ward,  at  an  early  day,  had  its 
ward  committee,  appointed  at  a  general  meet- 
ing of  the  ward.  The  same  machinery  ex- 
isted in  Congressional  and  legislative  districts 
when  these  were  created.  There  is  a  curious 
political  myth  that  at  some  early  period  the 
general  body  of  voters  attended  their  meetings 
and  made  them  the  direct  utterance  of  popular 
will  as  apart  from  that  of  politicians  directly 
interested  in  office-holding  and  the  profits  of 
place  and  influence.  For  this  legend  there  is  ab- 
solutely no  evidence  whatever.  When  Tam- 
many Hall,  at  its  primaries  in  September,  1897, 
polled  35,000  votes,28  a  larger  vote  was  cast 
than  had  ever  been  before  recorded,  and  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  also  a 
larger  proportion  of  the  vote  cast  in  New  York 
City  for  Tammany  candidates  at  the  last 
election.    These  "  general  meetings  "  and  pri- 

XTamman^  Ifoall 

73 

maries  began  in  the  grossest  disorder.  Clin- 
ton's meetings,  which  drew  from  a  social 
stratum  lower  than  that  of  Tammany  Hall, 
were  regularly  mobbed.  The  ward  meetings 
from  1820  to  1840  were  the  constant  scene  of 
boisterous  and  violent  combat.  From  1840  to 
1870  they  were  normally  in  the  hands  of  the 
bully,  the  black-leg,  and  the  prize-fighter. 
Tamed  by  a  police,  efficient,  with  all  its  black- 
mail, in  preserving  external  order,  they  have 
been  for  the  past  quarter-century  incompara- 
bly more  orderly,  no  more  corrupt,  and  no  less 
illusive  expressions  of  the  popular  will  than  in 
the  past. 

Until  the  passage  of  the  "Cassidy  resolu- 
tion,"29 in  the  State  Convention  of  1871,  the 
ward  and  its  election  district  were  the  units 
of  political  representation.  By  1822,  the 
ephemeral  "  general  committee,"  most  of 
whose  members  were  also  members  of  the 
Tammany  Society,  and  sometimes  acted 
through  it,  were  consolidated  in  a  perma- 
nent "general  council"  of  three  members  from 
each  of  the  eleven  wards,  into  which  (1825) 
the  city  was  divided.  New  wards  increased 
the  membership  to  forty-five,  and  in  1836  to 
seventy-five.  There  was  here  for  nearly 
twenty  years  a  ward  general  committee,  a 
"general  meeting"  which  tumultuously  acted 
for  the  party,  and  a  network  of  local  ward  and 
district  committees.    These  last  often  filled 

Civic 
3atfons 

74 

UammattE  Iball 

<LMc 
©rganis 
3ations 

ten  to  twelve  columns  in  the  daily  papers,  and 
were,  like  the  Tammany  General  Committee 
of  to-day,  a  tolerably  complete  roster  of  the 
office-holding  class  and  the  working  army  of 
Tammany  Hall. 

Between  the  disappearance  of  this  organ- 
ization in  fact,  though  not  in  name,  and  the 
appearance  of  current  conditions,  political 
power  between  1845  to  1865  passed  to  the 
many  voluntary  civic  organizations  of  which 
the  fire  companies  were  so  easily  chief. 
Some  social,  some  useful,  and  some  purely 
predatory,  these  varied  bodies  first  controlled 
Tammany  Hall,  and,  when  they  were  turned 
out  of  it,  for  ten  years  made  the  fortunes  of 
various  "  Halls,"  more  permanent.  The  most 
important  were  drafted  into  the  service  of  the 
city  in  a  paid  fire  department,  and  the  rest 
were  subdued  by  the  police. 

They  became  in  this  condition  accessions 
to  a  political  organization  which  controlled 
the  police.  When  John  Kelly  undertook  the 
work  of  reorganizing  Tammany,  the  Assembly 
District  and  Election  District  were  the  units  of 
organization,  the  latter  giving  a  member  each 
for  the  General  Committee  and  the  former 
supplying  the  Assembly  District  leader,  who 
sat  on  the  old  "  Committee  of  Organization." 
This  useful  and  powerful  body  was  employed 
by  John  Kelly  "  to  discipline  "  John  Morrissey, 
and  was  for  nearly  ten  years  the  centre  of  the 

UammanE  Iball 

75 

organization.  It  began  by  choosing  its  ruler. 
It  ended,  as  is  the  fashion  of  despotism,  by 
its  ruler  choosing  it.  It  remained  the  ruling 
body  in  December,  1885,  when  Croker  con- 
trolled seventeen  out  of  twenty-four  members 
and  assured  his  succession  in  the  organization. 

The  election  district,  which  with  its  single 
member  furnished  a  sufficiently  large  base  in 
the  city  of  about  a  million  with  160,000  voters 
in  1875,  had  become  an  unsuitable  unit 
twenty  years  later,  when  both  the  city  and  the 
voters  had  nearly  doubled  in  number.  The 
Democratic  vote  was  made  a  basis  of  represen- 
tation in  the  General  Committee  for  each 
Assembly  District  on  the  ratio  of  a  vote — not 
member — to  each  fifty  votes  cast.  The  dele- 
gation thus  determined  was  "elected"  in  a 
nominal  poll,  until  1895  open  only  two  hours, 
at  a  single  place  in  each  Assembly  District. 
The  delegation  has,  necessarily,  one  from  each 
election  district  and  as  many  more  as  choose 
to  serve  and  pay  a  fee.  This  procedure  has 
swollen  the  General  Committee  from  700  or 
800  in  1874  ;  to  4,562  in  1890  ;  to  8,000  in 
1 892 ;  and  to  upwards  01  1 2,000  now.  Its  com- 
mittees are  correspondingly  enlarged,  the 
committee  on  organization  having  in  1892, 
768  members  or  32  from  each  Assembly  Dis- 
trict. 

Real  power  and  control  rested  with  the 
"leader"  in  each  Assembly  District,  named 

Election 

76 

XTamman^  Iball 

Begems 

bis 
District 

by  the  ''boss,"  but  holding  his  place  by  the 
feudal  tenure  of  constant  and  unbroken  victory. 
In  December,  1893,  a  running  mate  for  the 
leader  in  the  shape  of  a  business  man  was  de- 
vised.   Each  "leader"  knows  the  citizens, 
families,  homes,  and  business  of  an  Assem- 
bly District,  containing  from  5,000  to  14,000 
voters,  and  keeps  an  amazing  knowledge 
of  their  votes,  habits,  needs,  desires,  pur- 
suits, pleasures,  and  crimes.    Each  election 
district  with  its  300  to  500  voters  has  its  leader. 
This  organization  is  customarily  supposed  to 
be  devoted  to  marshalling,  managing,  and 
polling  the  vote.    But  this  is  only  the  culmi- 
nation of  its  arduous  duties.    It  forms  a  vast 
net-work  through  which  a  host  of  daily  and 
necessary  civic  duties  are  discharged.  Through 
it,  foreign  voters  are  naturalized  and  trained  to 
new  duties,  employment  is  procured  for  the 
idle,  aid  distributed  to  the  needy,  the  unfor- 
tunate are  befriended  in  hospital  and  court- 
room, the  semi-criminal  receive  immunity, 
the  honest  are  guided  and  aided  to  those  ex- 
tra-legal advantages  a  policeman  conveniently 
blind  can  give  to  the  peddler,  the  vendor,  huck- 
ster, and  small  store-keeper ;  and  there  is  fur- 
nished, besides,  the  centre  of  an  active  social 
and  political  life.    A  part  of  these  duties  in- 
volve breach  of  the  law  and  lead  to  thinly 
disguised  blackmail.     Most  are  part  of  that 
mutual  civic  help,  busy  men,  however  public- 

Uammans  Ibali 

77 

spirited,  utterly  neglect.  Done  for  selfish 
motives  doubtless  by  the  district  "  leader," 
they  are  none  the  less  necessary. 

Their  discharge  renders  the  Tammany  or- 
ganization a  daily  fountain  of  benefits  to  the 
ignorant  and  helpless,  whose  votes,  won  by 
these  dubious  means,  are  made  the  bulwark 
of  daily  wrongs  public  and  private.  This  union 
of  crime,  oppression,  and  benevolence,  of  mal- 
feasance, blackmail,  and  largess,  has  held  its 
power  for  a  century,  neither  by  corruption  nor 
by  patronage,  but  by  its  hideous  imitation  and 
wise  use  of  important  civil  duties,  neglected 
by  the  well-to-do.  Their  sedulous  and  right- 
eous discharge  will  supplant  Tammany  by  sup- 
plying something  better.  No  other  method, 
machinery,  or  management  will,  for  no  form  of 
government,  however  free,  no  law,  however 
wise,  and  no  political  machinery,  however 
adroit,  can  ever  be  a  substitute  for  civic  cour- 
age, civic  virtue,  and  the  daily  discharge  of 
mutual  civic  duties.  If  these  duties  are  neg- 
lected by  good  men,  bad  men  will  use  them 
to  evil  ends. 

Civic 
Duties 

78 

XTammanp  "Emll 

•ftotes 

ant> 
■References 

NOTES  AND  REFERENCES. 

1.  In  1897,  the  vote  of  the  Tammany  candidate  for 

Mayor  was  in  New  York  City  (Manhattan  and  Bronx), 
16,607  less  *nan  the  united  vote  of  its  opponents, 
and  in  Greater  New  York  (whose  total  vote  was  only 
75  per  cent,  greater  than  that  of  New  York)  its  own 
total  vote  fell  51,562  short  of  the  total  of  its  oppo- 
nents, or  nearly  fourfold  its  New  York  minority. 

2.  The  first  officers  were  William  Mooney,  White  Mat- 

lock, Oliver  Glenn,  Philip  Hone,  James  Tyler,  John 
Campbell,  Gabriel  Furman,  John  Burger,  Jonathan 
Pierce. 

3.  New  York  State  Census,  1855,  p.  ix. 

4.  Hammond's  Political  History  of  New  York,  i.,  41. 

5.  Grave  of  Tamanend.    H.  C.  Mercer,  Magazine  of 

American  History,  March,  1893. 

6.  New  York  was  the  Eagle  tribe  ;  Delaware,  Tiger ; 

Virginia,  Wolf ;  North  Carolina,  Buffalo  ;  Pennsyl- 
vania, Bee  ;  Connecticut,  Beaver ;  New  Hampshire, 
Squirrel ;  Maryland,  Fox  ;  New  Jersey,  Tortoise  ; 
Rhode  Island,  Eel  ;  South  Carolina,  Dog. 

7.  "  Big  Six"  was  the  term  applied  to  Engine  Company 

No.  6,  in  the  Sixth  Ward,  the  foreman  of  whose  big 
"double-decker  "  was  William  M.  Tweed. 

8.  The  year  was  divided  into  the  seasons  of  Snows,  Blos- 

soms, Fruits,  and  Hunting. 

9.  Scharf-Westcott's  History  of  Philadelphia,  i.,  265. 

10.  Marcus  W.  Jerregan,  Tammany  Societies  of  Rhode 

Island. 

1 1 .  Edward  F.  Delancy,  New  York  Historical  Society, 

Oct.  4,  1894. 

12.  American  Daily  Advertiser,  Jan.  3,  1793. 

1 3.  In  1806,  Tompkins  was  elected  Governor  of  New  York, 

and  in  181 6,  Vice-President  of  the  United  States. 

TEammang  1ball 

79 

14.  Niles  Register,  N.  S.,  vii. ,  208. 

15.  Hugh  J.  Hastings's  Ancient  American  Politics,  p.  28. 

16.  Niles  Register,  xii.,  192. 

17.  Niles  Register,  N.  S.,  ii.,  192. 

18.  Niles  Register,  N.  S.,  ix.,  354. 

19.  Niles  Register,  N.  S.,  v.,  387. 

20.  Hazard's  United  States  Register,  ii.,  140. 

2 1 .  Thomas  E.  V.  Smith,  "  Elections  of  New  York."  New 

York  Historical  Society,  1893. 

22.  Niles  Register,  4th  S.,  vii.,  295. 

23.  Niles  Register,  4th  S.,  xiii.,  163. 

24.  New  York  Herald,  Dec.  10,  1838. 

25.  The  Tammany  Hall  Democracy,  1875,  p.  38. 

26.  Tammany  Hall  Souvenir,  1893,  p.  71. 

27.  By-Laws  General  Committee  of  Tammany  Hall,  viii., 

2,  1893. 

28.  New  York  Sun,  Sept.  25,  1897. 

29.  This  resolution  required  the  New  York  Democracy  to 

elect  delegates  by  assembly  districts. 

Dotes 
an5 
"{References 

GENEALOGICAL  RESEARCH. 

Mr.  Eben  Putnam,  of  Salem,  Hass.,  a  competent  genealogist, 
will  undertake  searches  of  a  genealogical  character.  Personal 
attention  given  to  the  New  England  field,  and  advice  given 
regarding  research  in  Europe. 

Mr.  Putnam  has  conducted  a  number  of  searches  in  England 
with  more  than  the  usual  success  and  has  the  advantage  of 
personal  experience  in  the  examination  of  English  records,  as 
well  as  personal  acquaintance  with  his  chosen  correspondents 
abroad. 

Sample  copies  of  Putnam's  Historical  Magazine  will  be  forwarded  to 
inquirers  mentioning  this  advertisement.  Mr.  Putnam  may  be  addressed 
either  at  Salem  or  Danvers,  Mass. 

Putnam's  Ancestral  Charts  (for  recording  ancestry)  at  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons,  and  Brentanos.  

gap***  jcrw  Historic  rgovk 

Among  the  subjects  of  the  papers  will  be  the  following : 
Now  ready,  Sept.  x,  1897. 

I.— Cbe  Staot  1>uj26  of  IRcw  Smsteroam. 

By  Alice  Morse  Earle. 
11.— "Ring's  College.  By  John  B.  Pink. 

III.  —  Bnnetje  San'S  Jfarm.    By  Ruth  Putnam. 

IV.  — "dHall  Street.    By  Oswald  Garrison  Villard. 
v.— Governor's  tfslano. 

By  Blanche  Wilder  Bellamy. 

vi.— Gbe  fourteen  flMles  IRounD. 

By  Alfred  Bishop  Mason  and  Mary  Murdoch 
Mason. 

vii.— Gbe  Citt>  Gbest  of  Hew  SmsterDam. 

By  E.  Dana  Durand. 
VIII.— Jfort  BmSterDam.   By  Maud  Wilder  Goodwin. 
IX.— ©10  <3reenWiCb.    By  Elizabeth  Bisland. 

x.  and  xi.— ©id  Udells  ano  XClater*Courses. 

Parts  I.  and  II.    By  George  E.  Waring,  Jr. 

xii.— Zbc  JBowerg. 

By  Edward  Ringwood  Hewitt  and  Mary 
Ashley  Hewitt. 


Barnard  College 

343  MADISON  AVENUE 


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is  a  twenty-page  monthly  published  by  the 
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It  is  a  record  of  the  practical  working  out  of 
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Xittle  5ourne\>8 

SERIES  FOR  1898 
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DESCRIBED  BY  ELBERT  HUBBARD 


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h 

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n 

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tt 

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<< 

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a 

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Zhe  IRewest  jfiction 


Lost  Man's  Lane. 

By  Anna  Katharine  Green,  author  of  "  That  Affair 
Next  Door,"  "  The  Leavenworth  Case,"  etc.  No. 
29  in  the  "Hudson  Library."  160,  paper,  5octs.; 
cloth,  $1.00. 

In  the  Midst  of  Life. 

Tales  of  Soldiers  and  Civilians.  By  Ambrose  Bierce. 
120,  gilt  top,  $1.25. 

"Mr.  Bierce  portrays  the  most  appalling  scenes  with  a  deliberation,  a  force, 
and  a  precision  that  are  rarely  seen.  The  realization  of  Walt  Whitman  s  4  Speci- 
men Days '  is  pale  compared  with  that  of  4  In  the  Midst  of  Life.'  It  is  a  thing 
that  one  reads  breathlessly  and  shudderingly.  ...  A  remarkable  literary- 
feat.  "Scottish  Leader. 

Boston  Neighbours. 

In  Town  and  Out.  By  Agnes  Blake  Poor.  120, 
gilt  top,  $1.25. 

44A  series  of  clever  stories  and  character  studies  by  a  shrewd  observer  of  men, 
women,  and  things.    A  companion  volume  to  Miss  Fuller's  44  Pratt  Portraits." 

The  Confession  of  Stephen  Whapshare. 

By  Emma  Brooke,  author  of  "A  Superfluous  Woman," 
etc.  No.  28  in  the  "Hudson  Library."  i6°, 
paper,  50  cts.,  cloth,  $1.00. 

44  If  we  begin  to  read  4  The  Confession  of  Stephen  Whapshare '  the  chances  are 
we  shall  not  lay  down  the  book  before  the  closing  page.  Miss  Brooke  has  com- 
posed a  clever,  strong,  and  original  tale.  She  will  go  far,'  doubtless,  for  among 
other  gifts  she  possesses  a  grave  and  cultured  style." — London  Telegraph. 

John  Marmaduke. 

A  Romance  of  the  English  Invasion  of  Ireland  in  1649. 
By  Samuel  Harden  Church,  author  of  "Life  of 
Cromwell."   Fourth  edition.    Illustrated,  120,  $1.25 

t  44  The  author  has  produced  a  thoroughly  interesting  story,  abounding  in  stir- 
ring scenes,  which  force  themselves  on  the  attention  of  his  readers,  and,  peopled 
with  a  sufficiency  of  clear-drawn,  vivid,  life-like  characters,  the  loveliest  of  whom, 
the  heroine,  Catharine  Dillon,  is  an  unforgetable  woman."— A^".  Y.  Mail  and 
Express. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and  London 


The  City  History  Club 
of  New  York 

<$><m> 

The  City  History  Club  aims  to  awaken  a  general 
interest  in  the  history  and  traditions  of  New  York, 
believing  that  such  interest  is  one  of  the  surest 
guarantees  of  civic  improvement.  Its  work  is  car- 
ried on  through  three  channels  : 

1.  — A  Normal  Class 

2.  — Popular  Classes 

3.  — Public  Lectures 

For  further  information,  conditions  of  member- 
ship, etc.,  address 

Secretary  City  History  Club, 

It  West  50th  Street, 
New  York. 


Gbe  Ibalf^flDoon  Series 

Series  of  1898 


Published  monthly.    Per  number,  iocts. 
Subscription  price  for  the  12  numbers,  $1.00 

The  Second  Series  of  the  Half  Moon 
Papers  will  commence  in  January,  1898, 
with  a  paper  on  "Slavery  in  Old  New 
York,"  by  Edwin  V.  Morgan. 

Among  other  subjects  treated  will  be 
"Tammany  Hall,"  by  Talcott  Williams; 
tl  Old  Family  Names,"  by  Berthold  Fernow ; 
"Bowling  Green,"  by  Spencer  Trask ; 
"  Prisons  and  Punishments,"  by  Elizabeth 
Dike  Lewis  ;  "  Breuklen,"  by  Harrington 
Putnam  ;  "  Old  Taverns  and  Posting  Inns," 
by  Elizabeth  Brown  Cutting  ;  "  The  New 
York  Press  in  the  18th  Century,"  by  Char- 
lotte M.  Martin  and  Benjamin  Ellis  Martin ; 
"  Neutral  Ground,"  by  Charles  Pryer ;  "  Old 
Hospitals,"  by  Francke  H.  Bosworth  ;  "  Old 
Schools  and  Schoolmasters,"  by  Tunis  G. 
Bergen. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  and  London 


